Good luck to everyone participating in the Global Climate Strike this afternoon! Get out and protest, because besides an armed coup (how awesome would that be), it’s all we can do to show those with the power to enact rapid, wholesale change that we’re not going to tolerate the status quo any longer.
It’s not even about future generations anymore, as climate change will directly impact us in our lifetimes. In 40 years time I’ll be 74 years old. Do I really want to deal with increased natural disasters and a dying planet at that age? At least kids born now will be able to tolerate a busted climate - us old fucks are gonna be hit the hardest and probably left to rot in our burning beds because we goddamn deserved it.
Huawei’s new flagship smartphone announced, runs Android but doesn’t have Google apps
Mercedes-Benz won’t develop new combustion engines, will focus on electric motors & battery tech
Millions of medical imaging records are fully exposed to the internet with no access controls
There’s too many damn video subscription services!
Cheap Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, TCL 75” 4K Android TV, Lenovo ThinkPad E495 laptop
Huawei's got a new flagship smartphone - the Mate 30 Pro. Has a fancy new Kirin 990 SoC with 5G radios, edge to edge OLED screen, 40W charging, amazing looking camera setup and so on. Looks like an excellent smartphone except for the fact it doesn't ship with any Google services, like the Play Store. This is because of the US imposed trade ban on Huawei due to "national security concerns". Huawei's made their own Google services equivalent, called Huawei Mobile Services and is offering a US$1b pot of cash for developers to make their apps available on Huawei's app store and use Huawei's APIs. 500m+ people use a Huawei smartphone, so there's a decent sized audience to work with if you're keen.
The head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Development and Daimler board member Markus Schäfer, told a German car magazine that "there are no plans to develop a next-generation combustion engine as the company focuses on electric powertrains" and that "the main developmental focuses are now on electric drives and developing batteries". For those that aren't automobile historians, Gottlieb Daimler is the bloke who invented "the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine" so the company he started saying they're gonna stop making new engine designs is a bit of a turning point for the internal combustion engine's decline - and about time too.
Security vendor Greenbone went on a Shodan safari and found "590 internet-accessible Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) servers with 24 million records in 52 countries; on these, 400 million images could be downloaded with no access controls". These PACS hold medical imaging data, like x-rays, CT scans and MRI images, which also include names, dates of birth, examination details and locations. All this data, just dangling out in the open to anyone with a web browser. No firewalls, no passwords, nothing. There were apparently 50,000 sets of data on Australia servers, exposing the medical images of around 2.5 million patients. Oh and even if there was a password, the PACS systems are full of vulnerabilities anyways - this is just the low hanging fruit.
Techdirt has a good opinion piece about what we're all thinking whenever a new streaming service launches - I have a tipping point of how many streaming services I'll subscribe to until I just go back to my old friends Bittorrent and Usenet. Even if you ignore the cost of subscribing to multiple services, finding shit to watch across a dozen different services is a pain in the arse and content you want to see disappearing from a streaming platform when a licencing deal ends sucks. I don't know why TV shows and movies can't be more like the music industry, where it's pretty rare to find a song that isn't on a majority of streaming services.
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TCL 75P8M 75" 4K Android TV - $1220 + $40 delivery, also from Bing Lee
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🎶 Elephant Woman - Blonde Redhead
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The Sizzle is created on Wathaurong land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.